Which would be complete suicide, and Marvel surely knows it. There hasn't been a more widely-agreed-upon perfect matching of character and actor in a very long time. Audiences AND critics love him in that role, and he makes them obscene amounts of money.

Long story short: If Downey asks for a contract extension that includes hot-and-cold running hookers and blow in his trailer...Then Disney is gonna suck it up, and start pricing it out.

Jodeo:MaxxLarge: bighairyguy: Marvel will move with a new actor if need be.

Which would be complete suicide, and Marvel surely knows it. There hasn't been a more widely-agreed-upon perfect matching of character and actor in a very long time.

Remember back when Tom Cruise wanted to be Tony Stark? That would've been a major fail. RDJ was made for this role. I was nervous when I first heard he was cast, but since the very first trailer for IM1 I was sold. Cruise just lacks the charm and wit for the role. (Never mind Nic Cage or Leo DiCapria-preo- that dude from Inception). Keep RDJ there through 2-3 more IM movies and 1-2 more Avengers. At least.

Infernalist:If Vanko had shown up at Stark's door, blueprints in hand and demanded an explanation...well...that wouldn't have made a very good movie, now would it.

Actually, that would have made a much better movie. Vanko shows up, demands an explanation. Stark gives him one, and tries to make amends. They become super-scientist bros. But Rockwell's character is there, whispering into Vanko's ear. He keeps making Vanko think that Stark is giving him short shrift. That Tony's just using him, like Howard used Vanko's father. An overheard conversation between Stark and Pepper ends up supporting this view.

All of the sudden, Vanko has an interesting character arc, and so does Tony.

Since Rockwell's character is really the antagonist, you can keep many of the set pieces in place, but have more nameless goons. Instead of Whiplash at Monaco, it could just be some idiot that Rockwell put up to it. Rockwell can be building knock off power-suits by cobbling together what he's learned from Stark and Vanko with his own genius.

What? Aside from the awful, shoehorned love plot that no one was buying, Thor was pretty good. Better than Captain America anyway.

I really liked Thor. There were a few hokey moments, but that happens in (comic) movies. Thor 2 sounds like it's going to be pretty badass too. Captain America wasn't going to be awesome, but it told a good story, established the character, and fed plenty into the larger Marvel Universe. Cap 2 is looking to be more interesting with the Winter Soldier storyline and the introduction of some new Marvel characters. Quite a few scenes in Avengers gave hints as to where he's going personally. Exciting times!

So far so good. Also, some press got to watch about 20 minutes or so footage, mainly the big blow up the mansion scene. Interesting spoiler in that one, so read at your own risk (IGN I think). And yes, they are plotting, building, and unifying all of these films together like comic books. Iron Man books/films are sci-fi action adventure pieces w/ a lot of character analysis of Tony Stark, part time alcoholic. Captain America books can either be total 40's/50's pulp action or Cold War action thrillers. Apparently Captain America 2 is styled after 1970's gritty spy thrillers. Thor is high fantasy epic. Hulk is the hardest one b/c the books have gone all over the place, the character has gone all over the place, and sometimes two completely opposite approaches have been great. Personally, Planet Hulk would be awesome, but man would it be tough to pull off on the big screen.

bighairyguy:Slives: Hmm, a whole squad of Ironmen?Wonder how they will explain it, considering that Tony should be about the only one able to create the suits.

The Mandarin has long been obsessed with Iron Man's suits so he's in the game too. The one thing they didn't show in the trailer was why they needed dozens of Iron Man suits. I'm guessing it's to battle a comparable number of Mandarin-sourced suits piloted by Extremis-powered humans.

/One for Iron Man 3 please//What do you mean it doesn't open for another 8 weeks?!?

I read somewhere that a big reason they were doing Extremis was so that they wouldn't have a Tony-fights-a-guy-in-a-suit climax again

Which would be complete suicide, and Marvel surely knows it. There hasn't been a more widely-agreed-upon perfect matching of character and actor in a very long time. Audiences AND critics love him in that role, and he makes them obscene amounts of money.

Long story short: If Downey asks for a contract extension that includes hot-and-cold running hookers and blow in his trailer...Then Disney is gonna suck it up, and start pricing it out.

What makes Marvel's Phase 1/2/.../n plan so different from anything else is the long-term vision / planning / integration. They might not all be 4-star gems, but there won't any contractual obligation or milking the franchise movies either. Each movie will have it's own story to tell plus will contribute to the larger Marvel Universe, and will be manned with top notch people on both sides of the camera. This is candyland for RDJ, the actor so I'm sure he'll stick around until it's time to pass the torch.

Long story short: If Downey asks for a contract extension that includes hot-and-cold running hookers and blow in his trailer...Then Disney is gonna suck it up, and start pricing it out.

Start pricing? I would be surprised if that isn't already worked out.For that matter, I would not be surprised if they are watching/managing their "talents'" lives the way Hollywood used to do, back in the day.

Well he's sober nowadays and I think that achievement should be acknowledged. Just more money for the hookers.

Oh, he'll be game. Downey's no dummy. When he signed on to do the first movie, he had it put into his contract that he gets a piece of the backend of any movie where he appears as Iron Man. Reason being, he knew at least one Avengers flick was en route, and that it was gonna be huge.

As a result of that, estimates are that he made upwards of $50 million off of the first Avengers movie. So he'd have to be a giant moron to do anything to screw up a payday like that. And he obviously isn't, since he saw it coming years ago.